News Briefs from Around Florida

FORT LAUDERDALE -- Officials say a large bloom of blue-green algae stretching across South Florida bays is threatening coral reefs and seagrass.

The algae extends into Biscayne National Park and the Everglades. Scientists say it appears to be partly the result of the widening of U.S. Highway 1, the main roadway connecting the Florida Keys, though transportation officials say evidence is inconclusive.

"You can't see your hand in the water," Lain Goodwin, who runs a charter-fishing business near Key Largo, told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. "It has decimated my fishing in these areas. Last year, I was catching permit, grouper, snapper and triggerfish. And this year, it's been devoid of all that."

Blue-green algae are not toxic, but can block sunlight from seagrass, coral and other undersea organisms that are food for manatees, sea turtles and other sea life.

13 students, 2 adults injured in bus crash

RUSKIN -- Thirteen middle-school students and two adults were injured when a school bus slammed into a milk truck on the way to school Friday morning, the Florida Highway Patrol said.

Ten of the students, along with the bus driver and the driver of the milk truck were taken to hospitals following the accident just after 8 a.m. on U.S. 41 south of Tampa, the FHP said. None of the injuries were life-threatening.

The bus, driven by Theresa M. Dowd, 61, made a U-turn into the path of the Velda Farms milk truck near the Hillsborough-Manatee county line, the FHP said.

A sheriff's deputy who witnessed the accident jumped aboard just as a student, 14-year-old Mariella Hernandez, got behind the wheel and applied the brake to stop the bus, authorities said.

2 Lee County deputies resign after probe

FORT MYERS -- Two Lee County sheriff's deputies have resigned after an internal investigation found that they participated in lap dances with each other at a retirement party for another deputy in May.

Hollan, Schipansky and former sheriff's Lt. Kim Falk violated sheriff's office policies that forbid lying and conduct unbecoming of a deputy, according to the investigation. Falk recently was fired for tampering with evidence in an unrelated incident, the News-Press reported.